August1991

Bakunin, that money was not taken from me or you. It was taken from the shareholders who voluntarily chose to buy and hold the shares. I see a big difference between that and the money now being paid to Andre Ouellet.As to your example of a corporation polluting the water of a town and then suppressing a Fox news report about it, I would like to see an Internet reference (I vaguely recall the story.) But the "corporation" did not pollute the water. A person caused the pollution. IOW, I dump my garbage on your front lawn and you sue me. This is a question for tort law. I don't see why this justifies abolishing corporations or treating the people who create one any differently from you or I.

One could just as easily use these (very short term) stats to show that American workers have a higher income.The fact of the matter is that the unions in Canada are now largely concentrated in the public sector. Public sector unions are in effect monoplies paid through our taxes. One can easily imagine what this leads to. All unions are cartels. They restrict supply and raise prices to make a monopoly profit. This leads to numerous problems but I'll mention just one: bureaucracy. The complexity of employment in the public sector lies in stark contrast to the ease of employment decisions in the non-unionized private sector. The public sector requires endless meetings, job descriptions, organization charts, restructuring, re-restructuring, priority lists, labour tribunals, red-circling and so on. Even the vocabulary is boring. This is a Soviet path to stagnation.

The next chocolate bar you buy will contribute (GST) to the shotput team, or whatever. Like synchronised swimming? Pay for it on your own dime. (I prefer subsidized Internet connections. I think the government should help Canadians to enter the technical age. Canadians can exercise in the street.) BTW, Kimmy, I disagree with your comments even if my friends agree with you!

Let's!Corporations are not "democratic". But all of the people involved in corporations choose voluntarily to do so. The workers/managers can quit, the shareholders can sell, the customers can buy elsewhere. Governments are "democratic". This means the majority decides and individuals have no choice. The relationship is not voluntary. (Well, you can move. Easier for English Canadians but hard for 'French North Americans'.) A corporation is not a greedy person. A corporation is a cooperative and reflects the interests of many people. Bakunin, give me $5,000 cash (50 brown $100) and I will give you a personal cheque for $200. Do you agree? What is 'profit'?How do you measure, Bakunin? When is good better than bad? Should we measure by lives saved? How should society decide? Horoscopes? I think numbers are a better measure. How about profits? Here's an idea. A cashier makes an error and returns you more change. Should you tell the cashier? If you do, the cashier will stay in the job longer making greater errors. If you don't, the cashier will be fired and the shop will lose less money (and the cashier find a better job). Bakunin, bad news is bad news. When to learn it? At 23 years? Or at 54 years? The cardinal sin, according to my grandmother, is waste.

Can I disagree? Seriously? Greg, did you see what you did on your screen? Did you view the screen as a newcomer? What do they see? Greg, you did this (Current Screen): Canadian Politics Section (Open discussion on any aspect of federal politics in Canada.) * Federal Politics * Provincial Politics * Canadian / American Relations * Moral & Religious Issues International Politics * United States * The Rest of the World News and Help * Announcements * Support and Questions ---- I think, you should have done this: Canada (Discussions about Canada) * Federal (Any topic about Canada and Canadian life) * Provincial (Any topic about a specfic Canadian province) International (Discussions about International Issues) * The World (Any topic about events around the world) * United States (Any topic specifically about the US) * Canadian / American Relations (Any topic specifically about Canada and the US) Moral, Religious, Political Issues Site News and Help * Announcements * User Discussion and Questions ---- This matters. People in newspapers/MFAs read this forum. Make their mundane lives easier. I would appreciate a reply.

Parizeau wrote an article in Lapresse about Laplante's idea of the way to independence. Here's the article (in French). Whaddya think? Maclean's Wells thinks this is good news for federalists. I think it is bad news. Like Trudeau, and the Clarity Act, Parizeau's advice to the PQ raises the stakes. I would be the first to say that Canada is not a country of raw, symmetric federalism. I think Canada is a country of understanding and compromise. We Canadians do not believe in ultimatums. Our country does not exist because of Plan B. And if Quebec becomes a country, it should do so because many Quebecers want it. Honestly. Not because a majority of MNA deputies vote for it. Dans le fonds, Parizeau veut promouvoir l'étapisme à la parlementaire. Am I wrong?

I once thought that the Olympics should always occur in Athens. The site could improve over time; the athletes would approve. Then I understood that US television pays off the monopoly IOC. Asian times to prime TV EDT are messy. Africa and South America have never hosted the Summer Olympics. (Correct?) Why not a few permanent venues with schedules for US/Europe audiences? Why not an 'international' games with competitions in different countries? Why not swimmers in Ghana, runners in Argentina, baseball players in Cuba? I agree with you MS.

Hugo's point is that there is no connection between the cash register and the service. Imagine you go to the supermarket, pay $100, then take what you want. (The food on the shelves is 'free'.) Now imagine that everyone else does the same. OMG! Do you make your own clothes and "keep the money in the family"? Have you ever worked for a corporation Hugo? IMO, they are Soviet command environments - desperately trying to cooperate by market means. MS, what about governments? Stalin? Hitler? Nixon? Bush? Did they do any good for anyone? (You can argue that the 'system' is bad and we need a true 'democracy' but I'll ask - what's that?)---- Arguing? It's a waste of time, IMV.I rarely (if ever) use the term capitalism. Markets are not perfect. I'm extremely suspicious of 'regulation'. I quote you at length garret again. Argue? No, this is a discussion! Pollute my drinking water. Well, corporations don't do that. You do it when you buy their products. But point taken. I agree with you. Non-renewable resource? People husband rare resources. People work at corporations and own its shares. (Shareholders expect to resell their shares to someone else - presumably the shares will be desirable - and the buyers presumably feel the same. IOW, current shareholders are long term thinkers. Why are Mercedes more expensive than Hyundai?) Infrastructure? Missed me there. Look. If I buy a computer from Michael Dell, how are you affected? If I choose to see a Hollywood blockbuster rather than a Telefilm Canada production, how are you affected? If I choose to buy gas from Petro-Canada, how are you affected? Corporations allow me to cooperate on a voluntary basis with people from around the world. No slavery anywhere. No taxes. No Grade 10 PhysEd, ie. no forced marches! Corporations mean that I get to choose. Everyone else too. I think that's great. Last question: How does CIDA operate?

I agree with BD on this one. Sorry, Hugo. Government regulations did precisely that. Consider unleaded fuel. Without regulation, it wouldn't exist. Wrong again Hugo. These are unfortunately all the result of (US federal/state) government regulation. Entirely true, Hugo, IMHO.---- No one owns the "environment". There are no defined property rights on the atmosphere. The environment is an example of John Lennon's Imagining. Without an owner, everyone uses it without cost. (Corporations don't use it. Individuals use it.) Does this matter? Simply put, we don't know if we are peeing into a bath tub, a swimming pool or a lake. On balance, I'd argue that if the price is zero (0), then demand is greater than supply. I'd say we should study this question more than we do now. And I'd follow my grandmother's advice: leave a place better than you found it.

Thanks MS for starting this thread. The CBC has noted in its Olympic coverage that we don't support Olympic sports enough. The result is that we don't win medals. WTF? I'm supposed to pay taxes so that some Joe/Mary can win a silly medal and get her/his 15 minutes of fame? Sorry. Subsidies to get people to be active/lose weight/be healthy? Maybe. But subsidize the swimming equivalent of Brittany Spears? No way. Let the Chinese/Russians/Americans get into this silly nationalism. The fewer medals we win, the better - unless its some girl/guy out on a personal lark. BTW, why are athletes/medal totals identified by country and not continent? I think athletes should swim by continent, or under their own person colours. The modern Olympics are Nationalism gone silly.

What experts? How do they measure "best city to live"? What is the criteria?---- One way to phrase this question of tuition is to ask: "Why should a 45 year old supermarket clerk, with a Grade 12 education, pay taxes (income, GST, PST etc.) to subsidize kids from middle class/rich families to go to university?" A better question is to ask: "Who should decide how many university graduates Canada should have (and who they should be)?" [Ordinary Canadians decide how many cars we have and who has which car. The cars cost $20,000 and up.] Final point: If provincial governments were less or not involved in PSE, we would likely have many more smaller institutions. Such institutions would arguably provide a better environment for true learning. With State financing, our universities have become bureaucratic behemoths where the student is a pesky intrusion. In short, our universities are Soviet enclaves with Party member/union activists.

His car was double parked in Manhattan. I suspect his driver started into the "do you know whose car this is" routine and the argument escalated until Wallace got involved. Being NY, the crowd booed the traffic cops.

Much more critical, the relationships between shareholders, employees and customers are entirely voluntary. If you believe a corporation makes "excessive" profits, then buy its shares. If you believe employees corporations are stealing, then sell the shares. If you think its products are over-priced, don't buy them. Nobody is forced to deal with a corporation. In the case of corporations, what tyranny are you referring to? They cannot imprison me or tax me. They can only affect me if I let them. This cannot be said of the State.If an employee of a corporation refuses to hire me or to sell me a product, it must mean that I wanted to work with him or buy its product. Trade by definition is voluntary on both sides. Both sides are free to refuse the deal. So I guess we should go back to typewriters since all those secretaries lost their jobs (and have remained jobless) with the arrival of computers... WTF? Air is free but the economy would come to a halt very fast without it. More practically, the invention of the wheel revolutionized life and the idea is now free to all. Nobody has a patent on the "wheel" and patents only last for 75 years or so in any case.

I quote you at length garrett because what you have written is frightening in its economic ignorance. I fear many people share somehow your logic. Consider this: Imagine I invent a new car that uses water for fuel and takes one person an hour to assemble. According to your logic, the economy would go down the tubes because all those car plant workers (and oil industry workers) would be unemployed and impoverished. So, garrett, I guess you're against new technological innovations that eliminate jobs. IOW, you would prefer that we return to a world of caves and fire. And heaven forbid if anyone discovers a way to start a fire because that would eliminate the fire-keeper's job.

To discuss Marxism in the 21st century is tantamount to discussing Aristotelian physics in the 18th century. By that measure, General Motors is an example of socialism.This leads to a broader point, entirely missed in that very silly movie "The Corporation", that the existence of corporations is indeed proof that markets don't always work. General Motors for all intents functions internally as a large ministry of automobile production. Taken alone, it is a mini command economy (albeit one surrounded by markets). Rather than criticize corporations, leftists should ask market defenders why corporations exist at all. The State is another matter. It typically relies on non-voluntary relationships. In simple terms, individuals under the name of the State have the right to seize you or your property whether you agree or not. I believe this was the basis of the American revolution (against a British monarch) and also the basis of the American Bill of Rights.

Sheila Copps is in to the three Gs. Guns, Gates, Ghettoes. Copps is Liberal PM PM red flag clueless. Canada is becoming Argentina. BUT WE'LL GO DOWN PROUD!

I have no Internet references but I have been in the US and Europe recently. Montreal, in my opinion, is dirtier than Washington DC. I also felt safer in Baltimore than in Toronto. New York City is more civilized than any Canadian city, said my Russian friend. In York Pennsylvania, she said it is better than Brockville Ontario. "You Canadians are dead", she said. "Americans stand up for themselves."

"Race to the bottom" thinking.Bakunin, do you believe that people's "natural worth" is nothing, zero, 0? Do you believe that people's only chance for value is a State Law? Bakunin, I have a very different view of life, and its "value". People do not require a State to have value, as you suggest.

MS, I suspect you have never held the newspaper Pravda in your hands because you can't spell its name properly. (MS, what does Pravda mean?)Ordinary Americans can choose to get their daily news from the Internet, CBS, NBC or from Fox News. Ordinary Russians could only choose to stare into space or read translated Sinclair Lewis. MS, I happen to enjoy western civilization. Please don't toss it away so lightly. MS, you really misunderstand markets. A market means supply and demand. In the US, the demand for news is not concentrated. And the supply of news is not concentrated either. In the US, the "information market" is thriving. MS, admit that the US information market is better than the Canada information market. MS, what can interested Americans know about GWB? What can interested Canadians know about PM CSL PM? MS, does the CBC make Canadians more informed? Is Canada more "democratic" than the the US?

TalkNumb, what percentage of the UK House of Commons is from Oxbridge? What percentage of the French National Assembly is énarque? What percentage of the US Congress is from Harvard/Yale? (Extra points: What percentage are preppies - Groton etc?) Government pick up 75% of the cost? Social mobility? Gimme a break! You been to England? France? India? What's tuition to ÉNAP? How do you get in? What's Oxford/Cambridge financing? The US system is porous. Where did Richard Nixon do his BA? Law degree? Where did Bill Clinton do his law degree? How? Conclusion? State-financed university education is a recipe for elitism. The institutions become bureaucratic producers of rare certificates for children of connected people. Poor people pay taxes for this theft. When universities must seek private financing, they are small. They manage to accept poor, smart kids so rich kids get a true education. The poor smart kids who succeed give money for carefully-worded scholarships for other poor smart kids.

Idealist, I do not know who are the 43rd or 45th largest employers. But Canada Post, as a Crown, is a State Monopoly. If you want to mail a small envelope in Canada, you must use Canada Post. You cannot choose a private courrier service. (DHL, Fedex etc cannot accept your small envelope. They must transport it in a big heavy envelope. That's the law.) I agree with Bakunin 100%.ROC should understand why the Liberals did not win in Quebec. In Quebec, the Liberals (ie politically active federalists) are perceived as thieves. But since ROC wants to keep Quebec in Canada, Ontario voted again for the Liberals. Note to Bakunin: I think the yes voters know what they are voting for. The Claude Morin etapisme was a fraud.

Who should we sell power to? Greenland?From the Toronto Star article: Duncan is clueless, both technically and politically. Our energy grid splits at Manitoba/Ontario for demographics and then makes a huge gap for Quebec's hydro-based system which the US/Ontario sensibly exclude from their grid.Rather, Canada needs a federally-operated national transportation grid. (This idea is sellable.) The Feds should build/do maintenance on a four lane "Trans-Canada" interpreted as any route between "major" population centres. Let the Feds help out cities by paying for the expressways. (Put them underground.) I think federal encroachment into highways is Constitutional. Watch Quebec's nationalists argue! Last point. Make them all toll highways using the technology of the 407 in Toronto. That is: free in off-peak hours but pricey at 5 pm on a Thursday. Split revenues with the cities/provinces. The US Interstate is a 1950s marvel. Toronto's 407 is 2000s cutting edge. (Give Bob Rae credit.)

There you go again MS. You assume the "income pie" is fixed in size and so the rich get rich by taking big pieces leaving small pieces for the poor. Have you ever thought that the rich make the pie bigger? Yeah right; if you believe that; you will believe anything. ridiculous The same fixed pie argument applies to Cartman. I'll add that the poor in Canada have never been so rich as they are now. In fact, the poor today are as rich as the rich in, say, 1925. Think about it. (Cars, telephones, running hot/cold water, health...) Wrong, wrong, wrong, Idealist. If you want rich people to help poor people, then steal from the rich and give to the poor (like Robin Hood). Don't do it by a "minimum wage" roundabout method. [Consider what would happen if it were illegal to buy or sell a car at a price of less than $50,000. What kind of cars would be bought and sold? If you had to pay $50,000, would you choose a Hyundai or Lexus? IOW, minimum wage laws simply price low wage earners out of the market.] WTF? Walmart relies entirely on voluntary relations. Its shareholders freely choose to hold its shares. Employees freely choose to work at Walmart. Customers freely choose to buy Walmart's merchandise. The relation between citizens (taxpayers) and the government is not voluntary. I do not freely choose to pay taxes. I pay them under threat of imprisonment. No corporation can force me into a cubicle unless I have agreed to go there. The State can imprison me - it can take my property - without my agreement. This is why we need a list of fundamental individual rights. Please guys, in discussions of the corporation, keep these points clear. (I agree that the 'corporation' is a weird thing, but not in the 1920s, Communist way you and that foolish movie portray.) ---- BTW, Cartman, your Orchard postlogue quote refers to "it" which does not belong "here". What is "it"? Where is "here"?

MS has a point. A civil suit can protect property rights. This whole process could be privatized except... what happens when the thief has nothing to be seized except life itself? Who will operate a prison? The poor by definition have nothing to steal. (Thieves apply "progressive" taxation.) To tax, the legislature uses the barrel of a gun. How the tax is collected is not the issue.

So, 62% voted against the Liberals? Draw your own conclusions, MS. Trudeau - even Pearson - knew better. BTW, good to see again your crazy comments Maple Syrup. I'm back in Canada!